


Extra Sensory

by Impractical Beekeeping (Impractical_Beekeeping)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, oblique drug reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impractical_Beekeeping/pseuds/Impractical%20Beekeeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best minds are still subject to chemistry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extra Sensory

**Author's Note:**

> My first effort here or anywhere. Be kind but firm, and I'll be grateful. I hope someone, somewhere, enjoys it.
> 
> Forgive me for using a second-person narrative. I don't generally do that, but it felt like the thing to do.
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> I have no legal right to attribute neurochemical peculiarities to fictional characters I do not own. Is this sufficiently vague?

Sometimes the world burns with an invisible fire. You wake up in the morning (or the afternoon, or technically morning but actually night), and things seem fine. You go about your business, and at first you attribute the sensation of intensified ambient brilliance to what you're doing or (rarely) who you're with. 

But brilliance is the problem. You're staring at your own hand as if it belongs to someone else, and the detail is exquisite. There's a G minor chord playing in your head, and it is the best thing you've ever heard, so you replay it for hours on end. You stand in a stairwell and suddenly know what flight feels like, although you are subtly aware that this knowledge cannot be applied to your very human body. It's seductive because it's wrong.

A man once described the feeling of slowly going blind. He hadn’t realised that everything was starting to get a bit faded around the edges, but it had, and then his optometrist noticed and chided him for failing to report to her office in time. Replete with new glasses, the first thing he saw was that absolutely everything was razor-edged and dangerous. It had been all along.

Occasionally, you become aware that you’ve been walking around in a gorgeous and infinitely hazardous landscape without taking any precautions whatsoever. This should be alarming, and sometimes it is. You're a full citizen of your body, and it is fantastic in every sense of the word.

That’s what it feels like. That’s how it begins. If it’s daylight, you see the dust motes. You see them so hard that you eventually realise you're counting them, but you're discarding the information just as quickly as it arrives. At some point, you also realise you're listening to your own blood sliding through your vascular system. It’s out of time with the clock you hear ticking in another room.

That’s fine. Or it will be, but then you touch one of your teeth with your tongue, and then you need to touch every single one of them, just to see if they all feel that way. They do but they don’t, and the subtleties are so entrancing, you cannot stop.

This inevitably reminds you that you have a tongue -- that’s such a strange thing -- and you find yourself tasting the air like a snake. This leads to forgetting to breathe until your lungs remind you they care, and you realize you have to be very careful, because it's happening again and you are probably standing somewhere you shouldn’t... or the kitchen smells of burning.

At times you need to establish an artificial focal point, preferably something external, predictable, and benign. Music is frequently the answer. It's passionate but structured. 

People should be avoided. They buzz about like demented gnats and yet they are glacially slow at the same time. 

There was a time when your solution to this situation was one of chemical adjustment. You could become more or less with exquisite ease. This is no longer a viable option. Now you have to moderate yourself through an iron will, through repeated routine, through carefully established parameters labelled Good and Right. You are aware that it may be possible to miscalculate this system's tolerance due to ignorance of certain factors.

Inevitably, you will do something you regret, but at the time? It’s all going to feel fucking magnificent.


End file.
